


I Heard a Maiden Singing

by celestialskiff



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Children, Dragon POV - Freeform, Dragons, Gen, Pregnancy, longwings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The egg is an awful lot of trouble. Excidium meets Emily for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Heard a Maiden Singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MilkAndBones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkAndBones/gifts).



> Author's Note: I have taken significant liberties with Excidium's history. I hope this does not spoil the story for the reader. 
> 
> Thanks to capeofstorm for the beta <3

The egg was an awful lot of trouble. 

Excidium couldn't sleep. The clearing seemed vast suddenly, and he didn't want to eat anything. He kept remembering the first time he'd seen Jane: her small, quick form, and how she'd knelt to portion out the cow for him. He was awfully hungry, but he'd noticed she was trembling. “Are you cold?” he asked. 

“No, dear, I'm not cold,” she replied. Her voice was familiar: he'd heard it in the egg, but a little unsteady now. She put her hand on his back – strange to remember how small he had been then, how her hand had been able to cover the space between his wings. She'd smelt safe, somehow, familiar, and he wanted to curl around her, to protect her. 

She said, softly, “Are you quite well?” 

He remembered her voice now, the rising inflection, and the tenderness of her hands on his new scales. _Are you quite well?_ He wished she was here, so he could ask her. He worried at the base of the nearest tree with his claws. The tree was in danger of toppling over but he couldn't stop digging at it. 

“Are you sure she's all right?” he asked Harcourt. She was only an ensign, but she was his favourite, and she'd been sitting out with him since two or three in the morning when Victors had finally gone away. 

He'd heard Victors yelling, “I can't do anything with the wretched beast, he'll have the trees down.” Excidium had been very irritated by the tone and implication. He didn't like Victors and neither did Jane; he'd heard her say so. Victors didn't want to have a woman captain, which was ridiculous, since Jane was the best captain in the corps. He'd thought about that and it had made his stomach churn too…

Then Harcourt had come and placed a cool hand on his foreleg, and even though it was so light and small he was aware of the touch and her smell – a pleasant, human smell, like new hay, and the dew on his scales when he woke up in spring. 

“She's well,” Harcourt said now, perched on his leg. “It takes time.” 

“It's been hours. Is it such a big egg?” 

There was a pause, and then Harcourt said, “Compared to the size of the Captain, yes.” 

Excidium put his head down. “Catherine,” he said after a moment. “What if I don't like the egg?” 

“You'll like it,” Harcourt said firmly. She could sound surprisingly confident and fierce, sometimes, even though she was so small. Excidium knew he might lose her to another dragon and he didn't like the thought of it. “You'll like it because it's part of Captain Roland.” 

“But it's been such trouble. It made her sick, and now her hips hurt, and she hasn't been able to ride.”

“She'll be better once she'd had the egg,” Harcourt said soothingly. “Her baby, I mean.” 

“I don't think I will like it.” Excidium scratched worriedly at the ground. “Can they give it to another dragon?” Mortiferus, perhaps. He didn't like Mortiferus. 

“Shall I sing to you?” Harcourt didn't answer his question. 

“It won't do any good,” Excidium said, but Harcourt began, her voice clear and strong in the early light. _Just as the sun was rising I heard a maiden singing in the valley below…_

It was his favourite. Excidium always imagined another Longwing was the narrator of the song, finding a captain just like Jane waiting for him in a green valley, smelling of cow and new earth. 

*

The egg had colic. It was red in the face and screamed every time it was moved. Or every time Jane stopped and put it down. It screamed even louder when she gave it to the nurse. She said it bit her when it fed, which Excidium thought was terribly rude and unjust of it, and there was never time to fly, and how he hated Victors – he was quite ready to spit acid at someone just to show how frustrated he was. Or perhaps not at a person, but certainly at the trees. 

Jane brought the egg to the clearing again. She'd brought it several times and told him about the colic and said, “Dear one, I'm so sorry I can't fly today.” She'd looked at the egg tenderly, as tenderly as she looked at him, and his stomach felt wretched. 

It made terrible, snuffling, crying sounds, but he let it perch with Jane on his leg. “I'm so glad she's a girl.” Jane gently touched the red face. “I won't need to have another.” 

“Why does it smell like that?” Excidium asked. He'd seen eggs before, and they hadn't smelt anything like this. Sort of powdery and sweet at the same time, with an unpleasant acrid undertone. 

Jane sniffed the top of the egg's head dreamily. He'd never seen her face like that before. “I know, she smells wonderful, doesn't she?” 

Excidium shifted, drawing up his wings. He didn't like to upset Jane, but he thought perhaps there was something wrong with her and the egg. “Do you feel well? Perhaps you should see another doctor?” 

“Oh, I don't want to see another doctor as long as I live.” The egg snuffled again, and then was quiet. “Good girl.” Jane rocked it a little. 

Dulcia's egg hadn't made any noise at all. This egg made strange, grunting sounds even though its eyes were closed now. 

“Perhaps...” Excidium began, but Jane shushed him. “Oh, it's wonderful when she sleeps. May I sleep here too, Excidium, just for a moment?” 

Excidium wanted to fly, not sleep. He wanted to be in a battle or doing something useful with the formation. But he sighed, and stretched out his arm, and Jane leant back against it. At least she was here, he thought. It was better than when she'd been gone and he hadn't been able to look at her. 

She was tired, her face pinched. Was she eating enough? Perhaps he could ask Harcourt. He flexed his wings uncomfortably, trying to settle. Jane dozed for perhaps a quarter of an hour as Excidium watched her. 

Then the baby, on Jane's chest, opened dark eyes, and blinked. Her eyes didn't seem to focus, they just stared upwards. Excidium stared back, and the baby sighed and squirmed. Was it going to start crying again? How dare it wake up Jane? 

He wasn't sure what to do. He could tell it off, but it didn't seem to understand anything. It squirmed again, and then blinked up at Excidium, and he could see himself, impossibly small, reflected in the eyes. Then the blinks got longer, and the eyes closed once more. It snuffled into his captain's chest, and he listened to them both sleep on the warm scales of his leg. His wings relaxed and came forward almost of their own accord, folding protectively around the sleepers. 

*

The egg could toddle around now, very unsteadily, and it had a name. He thought of her as Emily because she'd become a person instead of the terrible, screaming egg. She had hair, and her own human smell, and little hot hands. She grabbed him sometimes, hauling herself up by his nose or his foreleg, and she seemed weightless as a bird. 

“My egg is nicer,” Mortiferus said when he came into Excidium's clearing. 

“You don't have an egg.”

Mortiferus sat back on his haunches. “I do, I had one with Acerbia six months ago. The shell is soft still, but everyone says it is a very fine egg. I've been watching it.” 

He looked impossibly smug. Excidium was a little bigger than Mortiferus, just at the waist and the tail, but Mortiferus knew it, and Excidium thought it made him even more unpleasant. He wanted everyone to know he was older than Excidium, and had more scars. 

“My egg is called Emily, and she can hold onto the rigging all by herself.” 

Mortiferus snorted, an alarming sound coming from another Longwing. Excidium tried to think of Emily's other achievements, to see if they would impress Mortiferus. Emily laughed easily, just the other day she had climbed unsteadily onto his foreleg with only Jane's hand for support, she had begun to say, “Dr- dr- dr-” and smiling when she saw him, and when she slept against him, he felt remarkably content. 

“Well, your egg hasn't done anything at all. It might hatch too small, or the wrong shape. It might have to be shot. Or perhaps Acerbia is lying and it isn't your egg at all.” 

“Of course it's my egg. You don't know anything about it. You haven't bred at all yet.” 

“When I do, it will be much better than yours.” 

“No it won't. The egg you have now is useless. I heard the captains say there might be something wrong with it. It was too small when it came, they said.” Mortiferus had a familiar, angry glint in his eye, and Excidium wanted to lash out at him. 

“Well, I've never let myself be boarded, like you were at Cadiz. I take better care of my Captain.” 

Mortiferus snarled, and they had a brief fight, in which Excidium's cheek was scratched and one tree had toppled over. It ended when St. Germaine appeared and snapped at Mortiferus that he was a great ungainly lump with no sense at all, and what was he doing in someone else's clearing. St. Germaine was smaller than Jane, and fierce, and she had been Jane's captain before Excidium was born. 

Now, she waited for Mortiferus to take wing, and she said, “Such nonsense. I thought better of you, Excidium. There's no excuse to lose all sense just because Captain Roland is a little distracted.” 

Excidium bristled. “He insulted her egg.” 

“Because he's a great lummox who says the first thing that comes into his head. You should show more restraint.”

Excidium didn't think that was quite fair, somehow, but St. Germaine was glaring at him, and he felt chastened. It was all very unreasonable. 

Her voice softened slightly. “I'm glad you've grown fond of little Emily. Captain Roland worried you might not take to her.” 

Excidium remembered being frustrated by Emily's crying, and how uncomfortable she had made Jane before she was born. But he looked down at St. Germaine, and said simply, “Emily is mine,” and he knew it was true. Emily had begun to belong to him as much as Jane did – he did not know when it had happened, but it had. 

“Well.” St. Germaine sighed. “Have that scratch seen to, and don't let Mortiferus upset you next time. You have to be an example for Emily now, you know.” 

When she was gone, Excidium nursed his smarting cheek and rested his head on his forelegs. Mortiferus, he thought, would set a dreadful example for his egg, and it would probably grow up to be absolutely horrible and no good to anyone, and live in the breeding grounds. It was a very comforting thought. 

*

“She can't stay forever, you know,” Jane said. Emily was at the other side of the clearing, deftly scrambling up one of the trees to check for early chestnuts. 

Emily was young, Excidium knew. But she was strong, and quick, and other dragons had children as the runners on their crew. 

“She'll join another dragon's crew, with some others her age.” 

“She'd be happier if she stayed with me.” Excidium was certain this was true. Emily smiled more widely at him than anyone else, even Jane, and climbed his harness nimbly, and was better than anyone at getting pieces of bone from between his teeth. 

“But she'll learn more away from us. She can't be with her mother always.” Jane's voice was firm, but Excidium didn't think she was happy. She spoke as she did when she had been given orders that she disagreed with. 

Excidium lifted his wings. He knew no one listened to him, especially about orders – it was a fact he tried not to think about, like the possibility Jane might die before he did – but he wanted to argue. Emily was safer with him, and no other dragon would appreciate her like he did. He didn't want to give her up when he'd just begun to know her. 

“Not yet, though,” Jane said gently, stroking his nose. “Not yet.” 

Emily leapt from the tree – from a branch far out from the trunk, and she looked impossibly small, but she landed like a cat – and ran towards him, face flushed, hair tangled around it. Jane lifted her up and swung her onto Excidium's leg. “Well,” she said. “Do you want to go flying, Emily?” 

“Always,” Emily said.


End file.
